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Japan HEALTH CARE AND SOCIAL WELFARE
While most postwar Japanese relied on personal savings
and the
support of family, both the government and private
companies have
long provided assistance for the ill or otherwise disabled
and for
the old. Beginning in the 1920s, the government enacted a
series of
welfare programs, based mainly on European models, to
provide
medical care and financial support. Government
expenditures for all
forms of social welfare increased from 6 percent of
national income
in the early 1970s to 18 percent in 1989. The mixtures of
public
and private funding have created complex pension and
insurance
systems.
Data as of January 1994
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